Talk:Long Beach Polytechnic High School

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Meters in topic Snoop Dogg did not graduate from Poly

Notable Alums getting out of hand edit

The notable alumni section is getting out of hand because how notable do you have to be in order to be a Notable Almui.

Someone needs to come up with a strict criteria, or maybe there's already one, that deals with Notable People. I say this because alot of the names on that list have been edited in and out ever since this article has existed and some of those people I have never heard of and cannot find information saying that they even attended Long Beach Poly High School.

So if we have some kind of test we can apply to former students it would help clean up the list. Manorin (talk) 09:49, 12 July 2008 (UTC)Reply


Add citation or remove some alums without sources edit

According to http://www.nndb.com/edu/836/000080596/, only four of sixteen notables are confirmed alums. Would somebody be able to add citations for the other. Otherwise, I think they need to be removed. --Rob 17:07, 24 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

NNDB is a beta website, and I've found it to be of limited usefulness. I would not use it for deleting any information from this or any other article. BlankVerse 08:27, 25 December 2005 (UTC)Reply
If nndb.com is completely unreliable then we need new sources for *all* alums, or else remove all. Is that what your suggesting? I'm unclear. Currently, there's no sources for most alums here. I'm not suggesting nndb.com must be the source. I'm using nndb.com as a reason to *keep*, not as a reason to *delete*. --Rob 12:19, 25 December 2005 (UTC)Reply
I'm not saying NNDB is completely unreliable, but that there are huge holes is their currently not that comprehensive database. I don't think there is any one-stop source for alumni. I've seen problems with birth cities and other data in IMDB, and IMDB rarely lists high schools. There is one source for baseball atheletes that is great and identifies high schools, but I've misplaced that link. BlankVerse 19:11, 25 December 2005 (UTC)Reply
I'm not really sure if we even have a difference of opinion (or ever did). We agree nndb is just one of many sources of alumni. We agree nndb is incomplete. I've often had to go to multiple sources to verify a list of a school's alumni (actually, I always try multiple sources). If nndb didn't list any names, but all the names were listed elsewhere, then that would also be fine with me. But, one way or another, every name has to verified somehow. That's all I'm saying. Do you agree that there has to be *some* source for each alum; and that without a source, it must be removed (after all source attempts fail)? That's really my whole point here. Also, if you find that baseball alum source you mentioned, please add it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools#Notable alumni sources. Also, feel free to add any comment about the reliability or non-reliability of such alum sources there, if you think its worth noting. --Rob 19:24, 25 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

As someone who lives in the Long Beach area, I am pretty sure that all of those individuals listed in LB Poly article went to school there. It may be awhile, however, before I can find the time to verify those names.

If you are going to start doing this for all the lists of alumni for schools, and especially for colleges and universities, you are undertake a huge task where the quality of most of those lists are much lower than the LB Poly list, and notability of many of those listed are certainly less than the LB Poly list. BlankVerse 07:59, 26 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

I acknowledge there is some backing of some names here, and you've added greatly to that by adding that baseball link. So I'm not removing anybody this second. In fact, I haven't even had a chance to research each individual name, which is what I would need to do, before removing them. I'm not in some mad rush. As for the larger problem of unsourced alum lists, I agree its a widespread problem. I'm just one person, and I'll fix 'em where I can. I have removed a number of alumni from a number of lists. I've been looking through a *lot* of alum lists as I've standardiezed the section name to "Notable alumnni" (which is how I noticed this article), and periodically remove names (a number of cases are blatantly absurd).

As a Poly grad of '63 I know the John Wayne citation is wrong - I believe he went to Glendale High.Ronk0424 19:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

If a person on the list is wikilinked to their own article, I think that you would have to check all of the references there to ensure that you do not delete adequately sourced content. For example, I added Samantha Larson to the list, but I didn't include a reference here, since it didn't seem to be part of the style. I included the pertinent reference in her article, instead. Unless a listing is contentious (e.g., porn stars), adding a source for each "notable" alum in the school article seems unecessary, even if it might be desirable. In the article for my high school, I source their alumni status if it hasn't already been done in their own article, or if they don't ahve an article yet. Of course, I usually add their high school information to their article and add a reference there, too. The one source that I referred to in every case possible was out own alumni directory, which has some ommissions, but no documented instance of a spurious listing. See Tamalpais High School if you want, for my example.--Hjal 04:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply


Long Beach Poly Timeline edit

I have no problem with editors fixing the page from errors but why do you keep removing the timeline. You many not know the history of Long Beach Poly but if you go to the school you can probably confirm the information. Anonymous (talk) 05:31, 13 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.165.191.6 (talk) Reply

I work at the school. The timeline was created as an extensive research project. If you have questions, please contact me directly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quantummechanic84 (talkcontribs) 06:34, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I have removed the Notable Alumni section as that appears to be the one with the problems. Please do not discard the timeline work. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quantummechanic84 (talkcontribs) 06:38, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Please have a look at WP:V, WP:RS and WP:COPY for an idea of what can be accepted by Wikipedia. In essence, it has to be reliably sourced to independent, third party sources. There's no problem with the individual historical events being recorded, but the way in which it is being done is not encyclopaedic. Orderinchaos 06:45, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
The only reason given for the edits was "messy formating." I have fixed this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quantummechanic84 (talkcontribs) 07:03, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
All pages on Wikipedia need to comply with Wikipedia policies. I suggest reading WP:5 and the above links I cited very carefully. Orderinchaos 08:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
If you work at the school, can I suggest that you put this material on the school's own website if it is so important to have recorded. A long slab of blow-by-blow factoids is simply not appropriate for a Wikipedia article. Please look at some of the school and university articles which are featured articles on Wikipedia and therefore considered amongst our best, such as Baltimore_City_College, Florida Atlantic University, Plano Senior High School and Stuyvesant High School to get an idea about Wikipedia standards for such articles. You will see that no decent article has a long list of factoids like this. Even in educational institution articles devoted to the history of the institution, we do not write articles like this. See for example: History of Baltimore City College. This material is just not appropriate for Wikipedia and if this continues I will ask another administrator to take administrative action and either block users who continue to return to Wikipedia with the sole purpose of edit warring over this text or to protect this article from being edited. Sarah 02:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
Sarah... the high school pages you recommended extensively cite their own website. Your "models" are violating your own standards of third party sources. This is a high school. It is not an article discussing cancer treatments. Unfortunately, this is also a time for parents to make the decision of what school to send their child to. Our website is currently in a very poor state and this article is the only way that the rich history of the school can be conveyed to internet savvy parents.
I would appreciate it being restored so that we can take the time to edit it. However, you also need to do your part and make it clear what the demands are. I spent a few hours reformatting the timeline because the only reason you gave was that it was messy and to look further down the page at what was acceptable. Bullet points were what was down the page, now I am having to jump through another hoop. I don't have time to do this. I need the criteria, and by criteria I need more than just "this one looks nice..."
No, I've never said that the problem was "that it was messy and to look further down the page at what was acceptable" and I don't want paragraphs at all. I'm trying to tell you that that material is simply not suitable for Wikipedia. Things like who was the first student to go through each grade at the school, when the venue where some off-campus dances were held was opened, how many candidates ran for the student council in 1966, when the students first started playing badminton and so forth is simply not interesting to the average uninvested reader and not suitable for Wikipedia. As stated previously, if it is important to record these factoids then please do so elsewhere like on the school's own website or a blog or other free content site but it's simply not suitable for Wikipedia and continuing to edit war over it will result in the page being reprotected from editing for a much longer period of time and these SPA accounts and IP addresses being blocked from editing Wikipedia. School's websites can be used very carefully to source some material about the school itself which is why some of those other articles use self-published sources for some information. This is covered by official policy: Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves. Also, you should probably be aware of how I became aware of this article and this material in the first place. I work helping to answer mail sent to the Wikimedia Foundation (the not-for-profit organisation which owns Wikipedia) and I handled a series of emails from people connected to this school who wrote to complain about factual inaccuracies in this so-called "timeline". This is how I first became aware of what was going on with this article. I'm sure the students who compiled this have used all due care but there remains reasonable concerns about its accuracy. But this is really just a side comment as fundamentally this material is just not suitable for Wikipedia whether or not it is entirely accurate. I don't know what the "7 day" business is about but the person who said that isn't an administrator and obviously can't give you a free pass on complying with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. To the person immediately below who suggests deletion, sorry but that's not going to happen. The only way to have this deleted is to argue at WP:AFD that this school is not notable, however, school articles are routinely kept on Wikipedia so you really have no hope of getting it deleted. As I've said, the only way to resolve this is for you to find a suitable place to record this slab of factoids, and by "suitable" I mean somewhere other than the middle of an encyclopedia article. Sarah 00:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC) Also, please remember to sign your talk page comments by typing four tildes ~~~~ as it is too difficult to follow discussions and work out who said what when people don't sign their comments. Thanks. Sarah 00:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
I was in the middle of retrieving and citing credible sources when this article was entered in to edit protection. I have even found the newspaper article that the History Timeline quotes almost exactly. I :also retrieved many articles that proved that many of the alumnis to be students.

in the edit logs Flewis reverted the edit by OIC and asked that 7 days pass so that editors, specifically Quantummechanic84, can make the article more reliable. This article is in need of a lot of help, but no one can administer any, if specific users continue to toll and revert without even discussing it in this talk page. If we cannot come to a reasonable resolution I vote to have this article deleted, because many users have made good faith efforts to make this page this page as informative and factual as possible.


Here is my list of references that I have gathered, but was not able to save to the article or have been reverted.

A Capsule View of Poly History - 1895-1995 Historical Timeline Retrieved from archived database written by the Long Beach Press Telegram 1995

Source of the many Notable Alumnus about 80% of them

One high school, so many future NFL players

MLB Draft Factories

18-year-old California woman scales Everest, becoming youngest to complete seven summits

City of Long Beach Baseball Hall of Fame

Sidereel.com

Rotten Tomatoes.com - Carl Weathers Bio

The Reason


This article can use all the help it can receive, but some wiki editors need to let others work on this article and make improvements.

Manorin (talk) 04:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I would recommend a few things.
First regarding the format:
Try inserting the content into a "wikitable", that way the dates + info will be 'sortable', with the added bonus of being aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
Secondly and most importantly regarding "reliable sources" 'verifiability' and 'copyrights', I suggest the following:
You must cite every event listed in the timeline extensively with reliable sources. Mostly third-party, however in the case that there are no third party sources, perhaps use former yearbooks or student papers etc (however this is generally frowned upon per wiki policy, so I suggest use as many 3rd party sources as possible)
Also, (if the timeline is disallowed) why not simply include all the information within a "history" section of the article - writing up the timeline content, rather than presenting it in 'bullet-point' form.
If you require extensive advice, try Peer Reviewing the article
Just my 2¢ --Flewis(talk) 05:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
I am sorry, but at this point, Sarah wants paragraphs and you want a wikitable. I don't have time to do this a third time.
And I am sorry if I sound slightly aggravated, but I am and I am sure that you can understand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quantummechanic84 (talkcontribs)
(I mentioned utilizing paragraphs rather than a timeline) - ;) --Flewis(talk) 06:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
"I have even found the newspaper article that the History Timeline quotes almost exactly." -User:Manorin. Great, so it was a blatant copyvio as well! Sarah 04:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Article protection edit

Due to ongoing edit/revert warring the article has been protected from editing until the issues are resolved please discuss the issues. Editors can also use {{editprotect}} to request non controversial changes. Gnangarra 03:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Article has been full-protected once more for edit warring and content disputes.--Flewis(talk) 09:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
Wait, why did I full protect the article? *scratches head* I'll drop it down. BJTalk 19:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
BJ, please keep an eye on this situation as it is likely to need to be upgraded to full protection again. This article has been targeted for some time now by both SPAs and IPs trying to force in that slab of text you removed twice. They ignore all messages left on their talk pages and return regularly simply to restore that slab of "factoids". It looks like within hours of Dumbbot removing the prot tag when the last protection expired, they started up again with edit warring, so please do keep an eye on things and restore if the full protection if the edit warring by the SPA accounts continues. Cheers, Sarah 01:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
I've got it watchlisted, if any SPAs popup again I will block them. BJTalk 01:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
Thank you, much appreciated. Sarah 02:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

New to Wikipedia edit

I grew up in Long Beach and graduated from LBPHS. My parents are both college professors who teach history, so I have a lot to offer Wikipedia about the area. Is new content supposed to go here in discussion for review first? It's so hard to know what the etiquette is.

Kind regards,


VikingUsurper —Preceding unsigned comment added by VikingUsurper (talkcontribs) 02:17, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

You can edit the article if you want to but Wikipedia only accepts verifiable material that has been published in reliable, third party sources. We do not accept original research or first hand knowledge, so please be careful to provide sources for information and not to add material that other editors can't verify with reliable, published sources. I will post a welcome message on your personal talk page which contains links to some introductory pages you might find helpful. Please also remember to sign any messages you post on discussion pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). Thanks, Sarah 04:10, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

PACE edit

PACE stands for Program of Additional Curricular Experiences and is not whatever was highlighted before. Just FYI. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.3.152 (talk) 06:35, 8 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Sports Illustrated Citation edit

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/magazine/05/11/top.high.school0516/ is the overall SI article about the top high schools in sports and http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1111276/1/index.htm is the more in depth article on poly. Could someone please add the citations into the poly page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kdybens (talkcontribs) 04:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

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Request for Article Protection edit

Please keep controversial section intact, as school administrators can attempt to remove it. Although the school seemingly has a lot of positive qualities, parents need to know about how safe a school is. Thank you. Rockenthusiast1979 (talk) 18:56, 4 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Carl Weathers is an alumnus? edit

According to Carl Weathers' page, he graduated from St. Augustine High School in Louisiana. I didn't edit the LBPHS page because there may be two Carl Weatherses, or the Weathers page may be wrong. Camerajohn (talk) 06:19, 29 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

My mom graduated from long beach poly in 1965 and she and her sisters always said they went to HS with "Apollo Creed" at LBP. I have seen their yearbooks and the Carl Weathers in the picture looks like THE Carl Weathers, though his Wikipedia page doesn't mention LBP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cseamus44 (talkcontribs) 02:51, April 3, 2016‎

It's possible this is correct, or it may be that other people have made the same mistaken assumption. He was born in New Orleans but moved to California. Some online sources say he graduated from St. Augustine High School in New Orleans (1966) and others say he graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School (1966). I can't find a reliable source so I'm not going to touch this. Meters (talk) 19:50, 3 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

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Snoop Dogg did not graduate from Poly edit

Can we get a consensus on whether Snoop Dogg is an alumni? I've removed him from the list multiple times. He transferred to Jordan High School his senior year. I've deleted him from the list before, but he's back up this time with an inaccurate source. It's plastered all over the internet that he graduated from Poly now because all journalists do is check Wikipedia. It just seems weird to mention him as an alumnus even it meets the definition, if he didn't actually graduate from Poly. The most common understanding is that you're an alumni if you actually got a diploma from a certain school. Edit: found a pic from the Trailblazer https://ca.news.yahoo.com/photos/flashback-celebrity-yearbook-photos-slideshow/snoop-dogg-photo-1377820832462.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.0.114.13 (talk) 03:55, 5 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

See WP:ALUMNI. It does not matter if he graduated from this school, as long as he attended. The ref currently in the article is not very good, but there are multiple reliable sources showing that he attended. Stop removing his entry. Meters (talk) 05:35, 5 April 2018 (UTC)Reply